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Invoking Xooxer: 9/11 was caused by...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:13:20 GMT

The Matrix...

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:24:23 GMT

'Call of Duty' game sells $310M in 24 hours

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -

First-day sales of Activision Blizzard Inc.'s "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" broke records, raking in an estimated $310 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone.

The video game went on sale all over the world on Tuesday, but Activision provided figures Thursday only for North America and Britain. The company estimates that it sold about 4.7 million copies of the game in the first 24 hours in those markets, making it the biggest-selling launch in the history of entertainment.

College Football: BCS is busy trying to fix its image, but nothing else

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:55:46 GMT

BCS is busy trying to fix its image, but nothing else By John Feinstein

(Obama) has other issues on the table and, to be honest, short of threatening the tax-exempt status of the big-bucks schools, even his presence probably won't force the heads of the 66 BCS schools in question to end their hypocrisy...

Only one of the undefeated non-BCS schools will get a BCS bid. There is now a likely scenario whereby Boise State, which beat Oregon soundly the first week of the season, will not play in a BCS game while USC -- which just lost to Oregon by 27 points -- might. Ohio State, which lost to USC and a horrible Purdue team, might also play in a BCS bowl. Iowa might lose to Ohio State and still get a BCS bid, and Penn State, which already lost to Iowa, could, too.

But Boise State almost certainly won't -- unless TCU loses a game and Boise State wins out.

Now, the BCS defenders will almost certainly say this: "The Boise State-Oregon game was in September." They are correct. Let's put aside the fact that on the very rare occasions when a BCS school plays a non-BCS power, it is almost always in September. Here's what the BCS defenders also say a lot: "What's great about the BCS is that the regular season is so meaningful."

If they believe that -- and who among us would question their sincerity? -- then surely Boise State's win should matter regardless of when in the regular season the game was played. Except it won't. Some might call that, well, a contradiction.

Torture and Judgments of Guilt

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:59:14 GMT

Torture and Judgments of Guilt

From the abstract...

Although torture can establish guilt through confession, how are judgments of guilt made when tortured suspects do not confess? We suggest that perceived guilt is based inappropriately upon how much pain suspects appear to suffer during torture. Two psychological theories provide competing predictions about the link between pain and perceived blame: cognitive dissonance, which links pain to blame, and moral typecasting, which links pain to innocence. We hypothesized that dissonance might characterize the relationship between torture and blame for those close to the torture, while moral typecasting might characterize this relationship for those more distant from it. Accordingly, this experiment placed participants into one of two different roles in which people may be exposed to torture. Participants in the proximal role of prison staffer saw suffering torture victims as relatively more guilty, while participants in the relatively distant role of a radio listener saw suffering victims as more innocent.

NBA Talk: Opening Night Impressions

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:38:26 GMT

For some reason, I've been really looking forward to this year's NBA season. Shaq going to the Cavs, Vince to the Magic, Artest to the Lakers, Sheed to the Celtics... just a lot of relatively big names moving to good teams.

So, I took some time to watch a couple of games last night, Lakers v Clippers and Celtics v Cavaliers...

Lakers v Clippers

The Good: Andrew Bynum looked like he's gained a step on his inside moves and was much more adept on the glass. Odom already was a great ball handler, and played the pivot for an injured Gasol last night. Artest was smothering on defense -- he jacked up some ugly shots, we'll see if he can get into the Laker offensive flow later in the year. Kobe was typical Kobe -- he still plays undisciplined defense. It's clear when the inside game is going then Kobe gets more lanes to work with.

The Bad: Fisher is done. He's still a smart player, but he looked like molasses out there. On the flip side, Baron Davis of the Clips also looked out of sorts.

Celtics v Cavaliers

The Good: The Celtics winning in Cleveland is pretty huge given that the Cavs only lost two games all last year. Rasheed Wallace is clearly going to be the difference maker for the Celtics this year -- no one on the Cavs could guard him and he was so disruptive on the defensive side. Wallace as a #3/#4 option will be nearly impossible for any other NBA team to match up against. LeBron James is hands down the best player in the NBA because...

The Bad: The Cavs have nobody else aside from King James who can work the offense. Mike Brown has been the Cav coach for five years now and there still is no offensive flow. Watching LeBron try to run a "one v five" offense is fascinating, but the other four have to start moving their feet. Ilgauskas and O'Neal look slow and goofy and obstruct LeBron's drives to the basket. The Cav bench is sickly shallow.

US National Debt

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:40:19 GMT

The national debt ceiling is currently set to $12.104 trillion.

The Warning

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:54:50 GMT

When you have a spare 55 minutes, there's a wonderful documentary on the PBS website you should peruse. As we have learned over the past year, the massive derivatives market nearly brought the US economy down to ashes...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/

From the pbs.org page:
In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves."

Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.

"It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."

10 best NBA players of the last decade

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:20:01 GMT

10 best NBA players of the last decade

With the NBA season just around the corner, I took an interest in this article. I figured I'd chime in with my top 10 of the 2000s:

10) Ben Wallace - Best defender of the decade.

9) Tracy McGrady - Great scorer.

8) Steve Nash - Best PG of the decade.

7) Dirk Nowitzki - Great scorer, lead Mavs to one NBA finals.

6) LeBron James - Probably the most talented player the NBA has seen all decade. Through no fault of his own, has had one of the worst supporting casts of the top ten.

5) Kobe Bryant - Second fiddle for three championships with the Lakers, was the centerpiece of a fourth. Great scorer and figured out over the last three years that being a good teammate means winning more.

4) Dwayne Wade - Best SG in the league. Tough to play in Miami. Centerpiece of the only championship in Miami history, would probably have had more if the personnel were better and the coaching were more solid.

3) Kevin Garnett - Suffered through most of the decade on the awful T'Wolves. Even at the downslide of his career, turned the Celtics from the worst in the league to NBA champs.

2) Shaquille O'Neal - three rings being the primary player on the Lakers, one ring as the second player with the Heat. If he were less injured, he'd be a clear #1.

1) Tim Duncan - three rings being the primary player for each win. He and Garnett were the most dominant power forwards at their position for over a decade.

Foomer's Blog

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:49:26 GMT

Dang... I think I just discovered the best blog on BYOND.

http://www.byond.com/members/Foomer

All your life will ever be...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:26:02 GMT

Run rabbit, run!

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